


What Does It Feel Like To Fall

by JellyDishes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Disabled Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Neck Kissing, One Shot, RINGS BELL BUCKY IS DISABLED AND SO WAS/IS STEVE, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:00:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23661205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JellyDishes/pseuds/JellyDishes
Summary: They never talked about their dreams, anymore. Not the big or small ones. Maybe they ought to, but broaching that gap between them that sometimes felt like a canyon was far more frightening than the last one he'd fallen into. At least then, it had only been his life he'd been in danger of losing.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 7
Kudos: 24





	What Does It Feel Like To Fall

It was the quiet that woke him. Steve's sleep was always uneasy, and years of muscle memory meant Bucky had grown accustomed to sleeping with one hand on Steve's chest so he would wake up every time Steve failed to catch his breath in the night. Steve didn't need him to guard his sleep anymore, but it was hard to convince your unconscious self that danger didn't wait in the stuttering moments between inhale and exhale. 

Bucky lifted his head away from his pillow and the hard press of his prosthetic arm that had already been halfway through pulling out his gun, blinking the heavy angles of Steve's shoulders. They curved in a downward slope that lay silhouetted by the setting sun in the vivid colors of a bruise. It made a picture that could -should- have been captured by an artist or a poet. But there was only Bucky and the knot that sat heavy in his stomach as he watched Steve shudder out a breath. It reminded him so much of earlier days where Steve would have had trouble pulling that next breath back in that he must have made a noise, or maybe Steve had been aware that he'd been awake all along.

"Sorry to wake you Buck," he said in a rasp that made Bucky's own throat ache, and laughed quietly. "Been quite a day already, figured you needed the rest."

Bucky pushed himself up on one arm, a heavy frown twisting the contours of his scars that he'd missed Steve getting up, but it was more resigned than anything close to genuine. He already knew that he was familiar enough with the way Steve played on his senses that he didn't wake all the way up when Steve moved, anymore. Only when he stopped. “One battle more or less won’t make a difference,” he lied. He wasn't looking at Steve anymore. They never talked about their dreams, these days, not since they had both woken up in dozens of ways. Not the big dreams or the small ones. Maybe they ought to, but bridging that gap between them that sometimes felt like a canyon was far more frightening than the last one he'd fallen into. At least then, it had only been his life he'd been in danger of losing.

Bucky closed his eyes shut until stars burst and died on the inside of his eyelids and breathed out. In. Out. Out for four, hold for four, in for four. Again. "Steve," he tried, then stopped. Started again. “Where do you go, when you’re quiet?”

He was answered by a silence that lasted a thousand years, then Steve spoke again. “Tonight…? Nowhere at all.” This time Bucky definitely made a sound, because Steve laughed again, humorless and soft as the first brush of his fingers against Bucky’s. Bucky felt him twist on the bed. He still didn’t open his eyes, so he didn’t see the expression on his face when he said, “I went to that same place you go to when they teach you to shoot, Buck.”

Bucky nodded. He knew that place. An empty corner of your head where it was silent and dark, save for the clear silver line that led from point A to point B. Pick up A and point at B. It was as simple and as complicated as that. “Hard to come back from that place,” was all that he knew how to say, though a thousand other words danced on the edge of his tongue. Half of them were vulgar swear words that would have had Steve’s mother whipping him with a dishcloth, but the other half had him gasping in place of Steve. Quiet panted breaths through his nose that grew faster and faster as he thought of nothing at all.

“-ey,” he heard some time later. “Hey, it's all right, you’re all right. I’m here with you, and I’m not going anywhere. Neither are you, not if I have anything to say about it.” There were other words, but they didn’t matter half as much as feeling Steve gather up his hands and press the most achingly gentle kiss to his knuckles. “You’re here. You’re safe. And you are everything I’ve always come back for,” Steve told him in the tone he saved just for this, just for Bucky. Slow and solemn yet so full of an almost indescribable awe that Bucky couldn’t help but open his eyes. 

Steve was staring back at him, head tilted just so, so that the light from the bedside lamp -and when had that been turned on…?- cast his face into the sort of shadows he wished he knew how to capture. With a pen, with a camera, or with his hands. Or maybe it was just that he was still too dizzy from breathing too fast. “That’s all I need,” he said instead of any of those thousand words. “Just… just don’t move until I stop feeling like a very big idiot on a very small bridge.”

“Did you forget already?” Steve’s smile nearly made him close his eyes again. Instead, he leaned forward and rested his face against Steve’s shoulder, turning his face into Steve’s neck so that he could feel him say, “I can’t go leaving you anywhere, you’re too much of a stubborn jackass not to come find me again.”

That surprised a laugh out of Bucky at last, harsh as it made his throat feel. “Sure,” Bucky said, lips shaping a kiss in echo of hundreds upon hundreds more he must have pressed into this exact spot, and would again. “Blame it all on me again.”

Steve sighed and shifted against him, one arm coming up to rest against Bucky's back while the other rustled at the blankets. Without looking, he knew Steve was clenching and unclenching it into a fist. He couldn't quite fight back a smile at that, or how Steve’s hair was getting long enough now that it tickled his ear when Steve tilted his head. “That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?” Steve said as he gently, oh so gently, bumped his hand up and down Bucky’s spine in a pattern so familiar that it felt like it came straight out of a dream. “Reminding you of all those nothings that make up… everything.”


End file.
